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- Decide why you are using Instagram for business
When using any marketing channel, it is important to have a goal that you want to achieve. Instagram is no different. If you’re going to invest your time and money in Instagram marketing, ask yourself, “What do we want to achieve?”
Common Instagram business goals include:
Increase brand awareness;
Community building;
Presentation of company culture and values; and
Sale of products and services.
Write down your goals and track them. Think of your written goals as a formal review. This will encourage you and your team to be more intentional with your Instagram content, as you can always go back and make sure everything you share meets those goals. - Optimize your profile
If you use Instagram for business, think of your profile as your home page. You have 150 characters, one link and a few action buttons to get leads – so make sure your profile makes a good impression.
First, make sure you’ve switched to a business profile on Instagram. Business accounts offer additional features that allow you to grow your profile, track content performance, and sell on Instagram.
Next, write a killer Instagram bio. Your profile should include:
A brief description of what your company does;
Your category/industry (shopping and retail, business services, restaurants, etc.);
A tone that reflects your brand’s personality;
personal Contact information (phone number, email, address, etc.); - Buy Instagram followers
When we started using social media in its early days, it was purely for fun. However, social networks are no longer just about that. Today we can see many brands, companies and other organizations using social media for profit. Ever since Instagram became a popular platform, we can see different types of usage either for entertainment or for business purposes.
Instagram also offers a business profile if you want to use it to make money and promote your brand. Just like basic accounts, you can easily create and manage them. Instagram supports all its users by offering the same simple user experience. A business profile is great for promoting your work, and as a regular profile, you can get real followers on Instagram.
To start making money on Instagram, you can buy real Instagram followers, no matter what type of profile you have, every Instagram follower counts. Whether it’s a brand or an influencer profile, it’s important to have followers on Instagram. If you decide to buy Instagram followers, you can quickly start growing your account. - Get involved in your community
Using Instagram for business doesn’t mean turning your profile into an endless sales opportunity. Instagram is a social media platform, so learn to be social.
If someone takes the time to share their thoughts with you, it’s important to respond and show that you’re listening. Responding to comments is a great way to build a strong community on Instagram. With Buffer’s engagement feature, you can respond to comments on Instagram posts right within the Buffer platform — no need to write long replies on a small phone screen.
Calls to engagement are also a great way to encourage interaction. Play around with interactive stickers in Instagram Stories, such as polls, questions or a sliding scale.
Tito the raccoon communicates with his followers using poll stickers in Instagram Stories.
For posts, use your captions to ask questions and tell people to share their thoughts in the comments. It might sound cheesy, but think of it as a real-life conversation. How weird is it that you’re talking to someone instead of them?
Cleveland Traveler interacts with fans by asking questions in Instagram captions and responding to each comment.
Just because you use Instagram for business doesn’t mean everything has to come from you. User Generated Content (UGC) – any form of content created by fans or contributors – is a great way to give your fans some love and inspire more people to connect with you. Encourage your community to share memorable moments and experiences with your brand on Instagram and ask permission to repost the best content to your own channel. At Buffer, we tried this Instagram marketing strategy and it helped us grow our audience by 400%.
Remember that your community is unique, so you need to tailor your content to the interests of your fans. Learn how to calculate and track engagement rates on Instagram so you can see what’s working. - Engage users through following, liking and commenting.
Instagram is a community, and one of the best ways to get involved in that community is to find people who post photos that interest you, follow their accounts, and interact with their content and do Instagram comments. It’s the most natural way to get attention on your own Instagram account.
This accomplishes two things: first, when they get notified that you’ve followed them, there’s a good chance they’ll view your profile. This goes back to the importance of having great content on your account before you start contacting people.
Second, it means you’ll see their latest po
